"You know, whenever you break a tradition that’s 187 years old, not everybody’s going to love you. People who had volunteered to sponsor me, when the time came, ran out the door. On the other hand, some of the toughest people turned out to be my best friends. My two sponsors were both upstairs members. I could not get anybody from the floor to sponsor me, and some of those people had promised me. That was pretty tough. That’s hard to take."
Muriel Siebert on being the first women to buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. From her oral biography, recorded in Particular Passions: Talks With Women Who Shaped Our Times, by Lynn Gilbert.